Jan. 11, 1906 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



33 



solid piles. No, sir. Twenty pages of print would not 

 argue as strongly as that picture does. 



"Snuffs" at "Canadian Beedom." 



Aha ! A new department — and a new brother conduc- 

 tor. A noted writer once wrote that when a new dog comes 

 around the previous dogs always snuff him, and nip at him 

 — and that men are just so, too. So just wait till I get a 

 good chance unseen, while he is passing the canine " time 

 o' day " with Dr. Miller. 



Ah, here ! Inadequate transportation, several months 

 of summer starvation, ants of the raging lion persuasion, 

 honey 2'- cents a pound, and average yield 25 pounds per 

 colony — a pretty style to start in and give Canada away. 

 Or wasn't it Canada? Jamaica, do I hear ? Well, it's un- 

 der the same flag, anyhow. And there's a mighty bright 

 and enthusiastic bee-writer down there. We might wait till 

 he takes a nip at our tenderfoot's tender spots. But, say ! 

 there was another ancient feller who said something about 

 " Birds in their little nests agree." On the whole, seeing 

 " We be brethren," perhaps little birds in their nests are 

 better examples for us than the dogs at the back door. 

 Page. 839. 



How the Skunk Works Around Hives. 



C. W. Dayton thinks a skunk works at the same colony 

 nightly for several weeks — until it is too weak to send out a 

 good force when he scratches — and then frequents another 

 colony the same way. Possible. The ill-savored vendor of 

 essences is mean enough to do so. Page 841. 



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(£anabian 

 *33ecbom-f 



Conducted by Morley Pettit, Villa Nova, Out. 



Size of Entrance for Outdoor Wintering of Bees 



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I have had some bitter experience with small entrances 

 this fall, which goes to show one of the great disadvantages 

 of being miles away from your bees. The hive-entrances 

 in one yard were contracted to prevent robbing early in the 

 fall. Later, when that danger was past, they were not en- 

 larged. Result : Many bottom-boards choked with dead 

 b;es at the time of putting them into the cellar, and indica- 

 tions of bees not having had as good a flight recently as 

 they might have had. I am free to endorse all that " York 

 County Bee-Keeper " and the editor of the Canadian Bee 

 Journal say below : 



" After experimenting with different sizes of entrances, 

 I am thoroughly convinced that for our latitude, in outdoor 

 wintering, a fair-sized entrance is necessary for best re- 

 sults, and this winter nearly every one of my colonies will 

 go into winter quarters with entrances equivalent to 5 

 square inches. 



" One of the disadvantages of small entrances, espe- 

 cially for out-yards, is the liability of them getting clogged 

 with dead bees, and when this happens with a strong col- 

 ony for any length of time, mischief is pretty sure to follow. 

 Aside from this, for reasons I can not explain, the colonies 

 with large hive-entrances invariably winter best with me, 

 provided, of course, they go into winter quarters strong in 

 numbers. 



" [Last season we made some experiments with small 

 entrances for outside wintering, and we do not wish to re- 

 peat them. In our experience, small winter entrances are 

 regular death-traps to populous colonies. Our best results 

 have been with full-width entrances, 12x ; 's, bridged over to 

 meet the outer case. Probably a deeper entrance, con- 

 tracted in width correspondingly, might be better. — Ed.] " 



Fastening Comb Foundation in Frames 



With reference to fastening comb foundation in frames 

 by)means of a saw-kerf in the top-bar (page 838 — 1905), my 

 father, S. T. Pettit, used a groove in the underside of the 

 top-bar N inch deep and ', inch wide. Holding the frame 

 upside down in the left hand, he would slide the upper (now 

 ower) edge of the foundation into this groove, allowing the 



sheet to lie against a guide-board (the wires of the frame 

 would do, but he did not use wires). With spoon bent at 

 the point to a narrow spout, he poured melted wax along 

 the top-bar to fill the groove and cement the foundation fast 

 to the wood. 



When I got the Alpaugh hot-plate foundation fastener 

 this groove was done away with, and since then my top- 

 bars have been smooth underneath. We have, however, 

 what is not a bad idea — a 'o-inch double bevel to the under- 

 side of the top-bar to make it conform to the pitch of the 

 cells when the comb is built. A ' s-inch strip down the 



middle is flat for fastening the foundation. So the cross- 

 section of the top-bar is like this illustration. 



I consider the flat surface and the hot-plate fastener 

 about the most economical arrangement for putting in 

 foundation, as regards expense of frame, wax and time. It 

 has also the great advantage over any other style of top- 

 bar — a smooth surface, easily cleaned when poor combs are 

 to be cut out of the frames and replaced by foundation or 

 starters. If the edge of the foundation is not straight, the 

 hot plate soon straightens it, the only difficulty being when 

 the foundation has no width to spare. With Weed-process 

 foundation, well wired, there is so little sag we like it to 

 come within a quarter inch of the bottom-bar, and just to 

 touch the end-bars. 



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Doctor filler's 

 (Question ; Box 



Send questions either to the office of the American Bee Journal, 

 or to Dr. C. C. Miller, Marengo, 111. 

 Dr. Miller does not answer Questions by mail. 



J 



Smell of Tarred Paper and Bees 



I wrapped 28 colonies of bees in tarred paper, placing 

 the hives in pairs and enclosing them entirely except the 

 front, which is not covered at all. Do you think the smell 

 of the tar would do any harm ? Wisconsin. 



Answer. — Not a bit. 



Queens by Mall vs. by Express in Nuclei 



1. Having had bees for many years I often sent for 

 queens to improve them. I received two queens — one a 

 Cyprian and one a Carniolan. Later I received queens from 

 others. After getting the bees well mixed up, about 1895 I 

 sold some to a neighbor, l'/i or 2 miles distant. Since then 

 I have had other queens from some other breeders, and of 

 late I could not get a queen to go ahead of the ones I had. 

 Only queens reared from larvae sent by express in nuclei 

 from New York State went ahead of any queens I had. But 

 none did that came through the mail. Now the man who 

 bought my bees sent for no queens; bought no new stock, 

 but just let them swarm, and for color, strength of colonies, 

 storing honey, and wintering, they appear ahead of the 

 bees I have and tried to improve. How do you account for 

 this ? I looked at some of his queens this season and found 

 them large and yellow, and, I thought, thicker in the abdo- 

 men than generally found. 



2. Do you think that queens that come through the 

 mails are as good as those not caged? Pennsylvania. 



Answers. — 1. I know of no way to account for it ex- 

 cept that the strainof bees your neighbor got from you were 

 actually superior to any you received later. That might 

 happen in more than one way. It might be that in one of 

 the earliest purchases you got a queen superior to any queen 

 you purchased later, and it might happen, even if it were 

 only one chance in a thousand, that the direct progeny of 

 this queen, unmixed with any other blood, was the stock 

 your neighbor got. Again.it might happen that in the 



